Meet Pradeep Sharma, the Dirty Harry of Mumbai Police

Sharma had eliminated 103 criminals during his chequered career of 35 years in the police force

Encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma has seen many ups and downs in his career.

In the 1990s, as the Mumbai Police went after organised gangs and eliminated criminals, Sharma earned the sobriquet of ‘Dirty Harry of Mumbai Police’ and ‘encounter specialist’.

Sharma, who belongs to the 1983-batch of the Nashik-based Maharashtra Police Academy, had eliminated 103 criminals during his chequered career of 35 years in the police force — perhaps the highest by anyone in India.

The Nana Patekar-starrer ‘Ab Tak Chappan’ is said to be inspired by him.

Like Sharma, several of his colleagues and contemporaries are booked in cases or are totally sidelined within the force barring a few. During their heyday, these "encounter specialists" together killed more than 1,000 criminals of different gangs, but now, they just kill time.

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These poster-boys of Mumbai Police came to be eulogised as "encounter specialists" or "encounter cops" and earned sobriquets like "super cops". Also, the rivalry among these groups of elite officers and men had come to the fore. But today, if one rewinds to the period of late nineties and compares them to the present, the larger-than-life cops are history.

In September 2019, he took voluntary retirement, joined the Shiv Sena and contested the Vidhan Sabha polls from Nalasopara, but he lost.

When Sharma joined the Shiv Sena, president and now chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had said, "When Pradeep Sharma was in police, his gun spoke, now his heart will speak." After this Sharma said, “I was always inspired by Balasaheb Thackeray. He always stood by us."

Sharma also mentored cops including Daya Nayak, a canteen boy from Karnataka, who rose to become a policeman, and also the much controversial Sachin Waze.

On August 31, 2008, Sharma was dismissed from the Mumbai police on charges of corruption but was reinstated on August 16, 2017, at the orders of Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal. He also faced charges for the fake encounter of gangster Lakhan Bhaiyya but was acquitted by court. His last posting was the head of the Anti-Extortion Cell of Thane Police.

Sharma was from the famed 1983-batch with B Raju Pillai, Vijay Salaskar, Praful Bhosle, Ravindra Angre and Vinayak Sawade.

Salaskar laid down his life during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Together, they mentored several others and broke the backbone of underworld gangs led by Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan, Arun Gawli, Abu Salem, Chhota Shakeel, Amar Naik and so on.